The authority and assuredness with which The Tiger’s Wife (Random House, $25) unfolds belies the fact that it’s a first novel written by a twenty-something author. Téa Obreht’s narrator, Natalia, is on a mission to inoculate children at an orphanage in a town once separated from her own by a civil war. While she’s there, she learns of the death of her grandfather, the source of her childhood stories. She informs the reader that “everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man.” Fantastic and fabulous, these powerful stories from Natalia’s grandfather’s childhood make up a large part of the novel. They embody timeless ideas: courage, honor, trust, and, in the story of the deathless man, matters of life and death. As Natalia travels to her grandfather’s hometown, she learns that the stories originated in real events. The juxtaposition between superstition and reality, between magic and medicine, contributes to the richness of this amazing novel.
